The Alberta Teachers’ Association

ATA Archives a treasure trove for specialist councils

Most people have few occasions to bring archives or an archivist to mind. The poor cousin of the information professions, true archives are often depicted (when Hollywood chooses to represent them at all) as warehouses of disintegrating and neglected boxes—holdovers from a predigitized era overseen by charming and slightly daft eccentrics. Let’s just say that archival work doesn’t line up recruits at the high school career fairs. One online author even warns that new practitioners “will spend every day explaining that you neither design shopping malls nor dig artifacts out of the ground … your greatest dream will be to have your own washer and dryer by your late 40s” (Goldman and Schindler 2008). No, archival work isn’t glamorous, but it’s absolutely fascinating.

The definition of archives has become less precise in recent years. The information technology profession has appropriated the term archives and, quite frankly, debased it. Those to the digital manor born take archives to mean a network’s or website’s cache of stale-dated electronic data they can’t bring themselves to use or delete. However, electronic wastelands are no more archives than landfills are slightly disorganized museums.

Archival collections are specialized information repositories organized by context. They preserve unpublished materials for researchers who demand primary sources and who tolerate no meddling in the space between the evidentiary record and their own intellect. Irresistible to independent thinkers, archival materials have no editor, no commentator and no gloss. Here at the ATA archives, you might hold John W. Barnett’s actual letters in your hand and experience all at once the commitment and eloquence of the man, his elegant penmanship and even the quality of the paper (linen fibre, in prosperity, or Depression-era alum pulp). The teachers of the past, both celebrated and forgotten, speak clearly in their own words. Collectively, archives capture the voices of the human story preserved in time. The ATA archives preserves the story of teaching in Alberta since 1918. Of late, the archives has been proud to contribute research materials to those celebrating the 50th anniversary of specialist councils. Archives staff take a long view of such celebrations, and we are already planning the preservation of these materials for the researchers of 2061 and beyond.

The ATA archives exists for the benefit of members, researchers and, on occasions when permission is granted, education stakeholders and members of the public. Archives staff partner with archival institutions throughout Canada, sharing experience, making and accepting donations, supporting research initiatives and perfecting preservation techniques. Although primarily mandated to capture the ongoing history of the Association, the collection supports multidisciplinary research that testifies to the central importance of teachers in the social, political, educational and economic development of Alberta. What follows is an introduction to the ATA archives and its services and collections.

ATA Archives: An Inside Look

Archival materials are arranged differently than the subject-based organization of books in a library. Books that are about a common something are assigned closely sequenced call numbers and displayed together on the library shelf. By contrast, archival materials are arranged by fonds that describe a creator of the materials; all the creator’s materials are gathered into that fonds. This practice preserves the setting in which the records were created and offers different insights into the creator’s historical significance (and that of the records themselves).

Archivists seek to preserve the materials’ provenance;[1] each record in a fonds informs and enriches the evidence offered by all the others. For that reason, archival materials are said to be “unique but not discrete.”[2] The best example of the research benefit of this archival effect is the ATA archives’ collection of ATA founder John W. Barnett’s professional correspondence between 1917 and 1946.[3] These hundreds upon hundreds of letters, on all subjects imaginable, consist of individual teachers’ queries and pleas to Mr. Barnett in their own words and his complete reply to each. They arrest in time hundreds of conversations between the nascent ATA and its earliest members. The missives do nothing less than give evidence that the issues of vital interest to teachers then—professional support, classroom conditions, job security, fair compensation, safe working conditions—are the same challenges facing educators today.

What we are able to learn about Barnett the administrator, the workhorse and the visionary is rendered immeasurably richer by the preservation of the entirety of the letters’ provenance. There are research affordances that are possible only by maintaining the whole collection and refusing to pull apart the fonds and pigeonhole each letter according to its subject. By maintaining provenance, we’re able to identify trends, precedents, adaptations, reconsiderations, nuanced interpretations, outright missteps, recoveries, defeat of impossible odds, moments of genius, and nothing short of the coalescing of a set of principles and best practices in the remarkable mind of the creator of this fonds. Other archival fonds include those of many ATA presidents, Provincial Executive Council members, and ATA cartoonists, photographers, authors and artists, as well as specialist council, local and convention association executives.

Archival research, however, is not for the time-starved. The nature of archival practices means that records are arranged in their original order, often without an index or other aid to precisely retrieve specific data. Researchers must invest significant time conducting archival research. Planning ahead and exploring an archive’s range of materials is the foundation of successful research. There are few road maps to the content of an archival collection beyond a high-level description of the significance of the material and perhaps a rudimentary inventory. Most researchers find that the effort yields significant returns on that investment. As one recent visiting researcher writes:

As a graduate student of the University of Calgary, history department, I have made frequent research trips to Edmonton in search of answers to my question: What are the origins of the social studies curriculum in Alberta? More specifically, when and why did social studies replace history as an elementary and secondary school subject in Alberta in 1935? Sources such as the ATA Magazine, the School Act and curriculum files have been essential to answering this question. … Throughout my research, [the archives staff] has listened with precision to my research questions …This kind of speed and support from the ATA archives is a gift because researchers like myself are hunting in archives unknown to them and often ask questions that are difficult to unravel. [4] 

Officially, the mandate of the ATA archives is to preserve records giving evidence of the Association’s fulfillment of its statutory obligations under the Teaching Profession Act (TPA). Although that mandate is paramount, it is undeniably cerebral and academic. If the TPA is the brain behind the Archive’s operations and practices, then its heart is undeniably the story of teaching in Alberta since 1917. It’s a story wrought by thousands of individual teachers who, then and now, chose to make education their vocation, organization their mission and Alberta their home.

Preserving evidence of their tireless work, personal sacrifice, scholarship, leadership, professionalism and dynamism is a privilege and a duty—one the ATA archives is committed to fulfil.

Reference

Goldman, R, and A Schindler. 2008. Why You Shouldn’t Become an Archivist. Available at www.xtranormal.com/watch/7727401/why-you-shouldn’t-become-an-archivist (accessed September 2, 2011).

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Margaret Shane is the ATA’s records manager and privacy officer.